Industrial process control and automation systems, including distributed control systems (DCSs), are often used to automate large and complex industrial processes. These types of systems routinely include sensors, actuators, and controllers. The controllers typically receive measurements from the sensors and generate control signals for the actuators.
Many existing DCS systems are platform- and release-dependent. That is, these DCS systems are based on plant processes that can be replicated based on process and instrumentation requirements. Many existing DCS migration processes are release- and operating system-dependent, while the associated customer control system strategies and displays are release- and platform-independent such that they can be deployed in any system across multiple releases. Typically, any migration involves activities such as backup of system configurations, installation of software/firmware, and restoration of system configurations with the new software/firmware. These operations are repeated for each node of a DCS system, which consumes a significant amount of time. Currently, there is no adequate mechanism to provide a deployable and recreatable file structure that is independent of platform and release for rapid DCS system deployment.
In addition, existing approaches are not capable of making use of effective sharing models such as cloud-based, web-based, or virtual networking models. Many nodes in secured networks may not have any access or connectivity to external networks, such as the Internet. In some instances, even if a node has connectivity to one or more external networks, security settings may prevent sharing migration data with an external network.